There has always been a significant market for clear ice products because of both their appearance and better taste. The desire for such products has increased as people have become more aware of the fact that water contains many impurities and can negatively effect the taste of drinks and the like. In the industry of water products there has been significant growth in the area of sales of bottled water and water purifiers. Accordingly, people are also looking more carefullY at their ice products to assure the ice does not contaminate their drinks. However, even where purified water is used to make ice products the typical ice cube is very cloudy and does not give one the sense of a pure and clean product.
On a commercial level, clear ice is used for ice sculptures for many occasions. However, due to the present methods for preparing clear ice products, these items are quite costly. Furthermore, there are presently no products or processes available that enable a user to make clear ice at his/her home.
My previous U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,370, which is incorporated by reference into this application, discusses many of these factors and discloses what up till now has been the best method for creating clear ice. Prior to my application other inventions sought to create clear ice products by a variety of means. These processes included agitating the water as it was being frozen; directing air streams on the top of the water during freezing also to provide agitation; forming ice on moving paddles to prevent the entrapment of impurities and air bubbles; the use of centrifugal force for creating an oscillating movement during freezing; and forming ice pellets on orbitally moving freezing studs and then removing the composite for the created ice product after a suitable size had been obtained.
All of these approaches suffer from one common problem, namely the cost involved in treating the ice during the freezing process. Although my prior patent, which has been previously referenced, overcame many of these problems my process required the user to utilize specially designed apparatus in order to bubble nitrogen through the container prior to freezing. While this prior approach allowed for freezing in a regular container there were still additional, although greatly reduced over the prior art, costs involved in this pretreatment of the water.